First released in 1973, “The Smithsonian Collection of
Classic Jazz” was in many ways, the best recorded jazz anthology ever issued.
Selected and annotated by Martin T. Williams, the collection reflected his
belief in the great recordings by the great masters. He had written about many
of these recordings in his books and columns, and “Classic Jazz” allowed him to
put several of them into one package. Here were Louis Armstrong’s "Struttin' With Some Barbecue", Jelly Roll Morton’s “Dead Man Blues”, the Benny Goodman Trio’s
“Body and Soul”, Count Basie’s “Taxi War Dance”, Duke Ellington’s “Concerto For
Cootie”, Charlie Parker’s “KoKo”, Thelonious Monk’s “Evidence”, Sonny Rollins’
“Blue Seven” and Ornette Coleman’s “Lonely Woman”, and you could have them all—and
more!—on 6 LPs with personnel and annotation for 35 bucks! Is it any wonder
that the set became a best-seller?

It may not have seemed a sure-fire hit in 1973. At that
time, no one was sure if jazz would survive, let alone continue to evolve.
There weren’t a lot of places for jazz musicians to play, and historic
recordings were nearly impossible to find. Even under the Smithsonian banner, I
suspect Williams had a difficult time convincing the major record labels to
license their recordings. When he received the recordings, he had to take what
he got. Overall, the quality of the original Smithsonian LPs were quite good,
but many of the recordings were bathed in echo from old LP transfers, and worse
yet, some were in god-awful “electronically reprocessed” stereo. A few years
later, bolstered by the critical and financial success of “Classic Jazz”, those
same record labels began reissuing jazz recordings. Smithsonian also expanded
their reissue program, issuing single and double-LP sets of Armstrong,
Henderson, Ellington, Tatum and Gillespie, and creating new boxed sets on big
band jazz, swing era soloists, jazz piano and American popular song.

Anyone who has ever created a compilation—whether a simple
collection of personal favorites or a full-blown anthology—has been greeted
with the inevitable criticisms, “How could they leave out such-and-such?” or
“Why did they include such-and-such, instead of such-and-such?” I suppose every
person who bought “Classic Jazz” had their own opinions about Williams’ choices,
but Williams took responsibility for his selections and defended them
eloquently in his extensive liner notes. Taken as a personal overview of jazz
history, the set holds up rather well. Nonetheless, in the mid-80s, Williams
decided to update “Classic Jazz”. He took out a handful of selections and added
a few others, both to expand the artist roster and to focus the set. He
enlisted engineer Jack
Towers to re-master the collection,
instructing him to go back to original 78s wherever possible so that the
earlier recordings would be in their original mono and not in phony stereo.
While Williams’ instructions were not carried out to the letter (the original
pressings erroneously included an alternate take of Roy Eldridge’s “Rockin’
Chair” from a 1980s LP), the sound was much improved, and Williams’ revised
picks offered a better-rounded history of jazz.

Williams died in 1992, and five years later, the Smithsonian
decided to give “Classic Jazz” another makeover. The CD era brought re-mastered
recordings from original tape and disc sources, and, as a result, the old
classics sounded better than their ancient LP editions. Smithsonian got fresh
re-masters of the recordings, and wisely retained all of Williams’ revised
selections. Reissue producer Bruce Talbot’s one major change was to restore several
of the recordings to their full length (Williams was notorious for creating
excerpts, sometimes to focus on a particular solo, and/or to remove portions of
the discs that he judged to be unworthy of repeated listening).

A few years later, all of the Smithsonian titles went out of
print, and the only places you could find them were on eBay or in libraries.
That’s still the case, but now Smithsonian has released “Jazz: A Smithsonian Anthology”,
and just like its title, the new set bears similarities to Martin Williams’
original, but the results are quite different. For one thing, the new version
was compiled not by one person, but by committee. Also, someone decided to
include more artists by limiting each musician to one or two selections. The
end result is a Frankenstein monster somehow intended to replace Williams’
expertly conceived collection.

I will admit from the outset that I admire the work of many
of the committee members. In fact, any of the historians represented here could
have created a new anthology on their own that would have stood up to Williams’
original collection.As it stands, I
find that every good thing I can say is tempered by something negative. For
example, I’m thrilled to see artists such as the Boswell Sisters, Chick Webb,
Mary Lou Williams, Artie Shaw, Machito, George Shearing, the original Gerry
Mulligan Quartet, Shorty Rogers, Chico Hamilton and Sun Ra included. However,
the inclusion of these artists does not override the absence of several
essential recordings (go back to the first paragraph and look at that list
again. None of those recordings appear in the new set!). The new set’s book is
attractive, and while it is bound like a traditional volume, the open pages lay
flat so it can be set down on a table as one listens to the recordings. But
some of the things that are written on those pages are poorly conceived, and
they were written by people who should know better. John Edward Hasse’s notes
on Ellington’s “Ko-Ko” never mentions the polytonal harmonic structure that
made that piece a classic, and Robin D.G. Kelly’s note for Monk’s “Misterioso”
concludes with a biographical note about Monk’s loss of his cabaret card in
1951. Since there are no more Monk recordings on the set(!), that’s where we
leave him, with no mention of his later resurgence or world tours. Several
essays have virtually no discussion of the music, there are duplications (at
least two references to Coltrane’s famous quote on Stan Getz’s sound), and
several surprising lapses in historical judgment (Gunther Schuller’s
jaw-dropping assertion that Monk “left no ongoing living tradition” was
debunked thirty years ago by none other than Martin Williams! Further, Monk’s
legacy has grown substantially in the years since Willams’ essay.)

There are much bigger problems with the new set. One of the
biggest was putting all of the selections in strict chronological order. This makes absolutely no sense in a history
of jazz! Many jazz styles co-existed and developed simultaneously, and
putting the cuts in chronological order just mixes them all together and
confuses the listener. Williams put his selections in historical order, detailing each style and musician before moving
to the next. The current set ruins all sense of historical continuity. For
example, disc 1, track 4 is King Oliver’s “Dippermouth Blues”, recorded in
1923, and part of Louis Armstrong’s first recording session. Armstrong plays
lead during one chorus of this track but does not solo. Track 5 is Fletcher Henderson’s 1926 “The
Stampede” which shows Henderson’s soloists displaying the influence of
Armstrong, who by that time, had played in Henderson’s band for a year, then
left to work and record under his own name. Because of the chronology rule, we
don’t hear an example of mature Armstrong until track 11 (1928’s “West End
Blues”), by which time we’ve already heard a track with Bubber Miley and two
cuts by Bix Beiderbecke!

Worse yet, because of the committee approach, there’s little
room for comparison between tracks. Williams opened his collection with Scott
Joplin’s piano roll of “Maple Leaf Rag” followed directly by Jelly Roll
Morton’s transformation of the same piece. Not only did this comparison show the
differences and similarities between two great composer/pianists, it also
showed how jazz is created with melodic/rhythmic paraphrase and full-blown
improvisation. There are instances where the writers in the new set comment on
other recordings in the anthology, but the dramatic juxtapositions of related
recordings is lost in this set.

One goal of the new set was to bring the collection up to
date by including recordings by young artists. There’s no question this should
be done, but why mess up Williams’ work in the process? Although most of the
last 2 CDs of the new version includes styles and artists not covered by
Williams (and a lot of it was recorded after Williams’ death), there’s still
plenty of important recent music that is overlooked. I can’t understand why
Smithsonian did not restore “Classic Jazz” to their catalog and then create a
new multi-disc collection of contemporary jazz, which might start at “Kind of
Blue” and move forward from there. Given the overwhelmingly poor reviews of the
new set, Smithsonian might consider doing a “New Coke”/“Classic Coke”
turnaround and give us back the “Classic Jazz” that we love.

Full disclosure dept:
My first published work was a revised discography for the Smithsonian
Collection of Classic Jazz. I compiled it in 1983, ten years after the release
of the original set. I was not hired by Smithsonian to do this work. I collected the data on my own and submitted
it to Martin Williams, who included it in the 1987 revision of Classic Jazz.
While I had several telephone conversations with Mr. Williams, I had no input
whatsoever as to the content of the collection. I received no payment for my
work, except for complimentary copies of the revised sets on CD and LP. I did
not request, nor was I provided with, a promotional copy of the new anthology.